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Saturday, 30 November 2013

Malala- where is she now

In late December of last year we wrote a post about Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist who spoke out against the Taliban for their restriction of women's freedom and female education. Malala was targeted and shot in the head in early October 2012 in an attack outside her school. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying her work was an obscenity that needed to be stopped. "She was pro-West...she was young but she was promoting Western culture." After several surgeries and months of rehabilitation Malala recovered, and even went on to give an impassioned speech at the United Nations in July. But recently some people have been saying she is being unwittingly manipulated for political reasons, in articles like this and this. Malala has been speaking out against claims that she is being Westernized. Last month in a BBC interview she said, "“The thing is that the people of Pakistan have supported me. They don’t think of me as Western. I am a daughter of Pakistan and I am proud that I am a Pakistani.” Malala was in the running for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. It was awarded in October to Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), but her work continues. "My father says that education is neither Eastern or Western. Education is education: it’s the right of everyone."